Unquestioned Answers

There is no Truth, but there is truth. The lowercase truth does not, however, mean partial truth or ornamented truth. The legal oath we use is : The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

There may always be disagreement. Opinions are personal. Facts, though, are not personal. Facts are the same for everyone. However, missing facts, less than the whole truth, mislead; and irrelevant facts, more than nothing but the truth, obfuscate.

Perhaps the biggest struggle is sorting out one’s own set of facts from one’s opinions. It’s separating the facts from the assumptions; the facts from the misinformation that’s never been validated; the facts from the unquestioned answers.

No one can know it all or do it all. With the exponential increase in knowledge no one can be vigilant enough. The only solution is reliance—reliance on ourselves and reliance on others. Unless we, that means you, me, and everyone we know, work together to dedicate our lives to the facts accurately portrayed and clearly explained, to the full unembellished truth without spin or frame, we will never reach the goal of the common good, never achieve democracy, never rise to be a peaceful civilization.

Democracy requires full participation of every citizen in order to function. Yet, participation alone isn’t sufficient. The citizenry must be well informed. An uninformed, misinformed, or under-informed public will fail at self-governance. It’s imperative for every citizen to be responsible for seeking and propagating only accurate facts. The burden of proof is on each of us.

The current structure of the US political system, and the actions of the news media are failing, that is, unless the goal is to destroy democracy. It certainly appears that way. Those who argue that they are following the founders are stating a fact, but it’s not the whole truth. The founders were in conflict among themselves from the start. One side favoring British tradition verses the other side charging towards democracy and egalitarianism. The same debates and struggles have continued nonstop through the last 239 years. The antidemocratic side has been gaining ground since the late 1970s. That fact is not too surprising. Societal amnesia comes swiftly. Those who lived through the Great Depression and the Great Progressive Era of the first half of the 20th century have mostly left this world; their memories gone with them. Their descendants don’t have the perspective of the earlier generation. The gains made midcentury, evidenced by the prosperity and unprecedented social leveling of the ’50s and ’60s, have been, and are being incrementally erased.

Think about it.
Read about it : The Fight for the Four Freedoms, Harvey J. Kaye
Read more about it : Capital, Thomas Piketty.
Talk about it.